One of my executives recently shared a letter with me that Jeff Bezos sent to Amazon’s shareholders in 2016. One of the sections in his letter was titled “Resist Proxies.” He mentions that process can become the proxy for the result you want. Yes, processes are vital, and they can help you grow a company, but there is a time when processes need to be challenged.
At Service Express, we’ve grown from 15 employees to over 500. We used scalable processes to get us here, and I firmly believe if you combine great people and systems, you can get amazing results. On the other hand, processes can become outdated as you grow. An example that Jeff talks about in his letter is when people start to follow the process blindly, and if it doesn’t work, they throw their hands in the air and say they followed what they were supposed to do.
When you’re a growing company, scalable processes are essential to streamline the business. I suggest consistently looking at your processes and always try to find ways to simplify them and remember that the goal is not the process but the results!
